ADAMUZ, Spain (AP) — Spanish police said Monday that at least 39 people are confirmed dead in a high-speed rail collision the previous night in the south of the country when the tail end of a train jumped the track, causing another train speeding past in the opposite direction to derail.
The impact tossed the second train’s lead carriages off the track, sending them plummeting down a 4-meter (13-foot) slope. Some bodies were found hundreds of meters (feet) from the crash site, Andalusia regional president Juanma Moreno said, describing the wreckage a “mass of twisted metal” with bodies likely still to be found inside.
Efforts to recover the bodies continued Monday, and the death toll is likely to rise. Authorities are also focusing on attending hundreds of distraught family members and have asked for them to provide DNA samples to help in the identification of the victims.
The crash occurred Sunday at 7:45 p.m. when the tail end of a train carrying 289 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails at 7:45 p.m. It slammed into an incoming train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.
The head of the second train, which was carrying nearly 200 passengers, took the brunt of the impact, Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said. That collision knocked its first two carriages off the track. Puente said that it appeared the largest number of the deaths occurred in those carriages.
Authorities said all the survivors had been rescued in the early morning.
Moreno said Monday morning that emergency services were still searching for bodies.
“It is likely (that there will be more dead people found) when you look at the mass of metal that is there. The firefighters have done a great job, but unfortunately when they get the heavy machinery to lift the carriages it is probable we will find more victims.”
“Here at ground zero, when you look at this mass of twisted iron, you see the violence of the impact,” Moreno said.
Moreno said that authorities are also searching the area near the accident for possible bodies.
“The impact was so incredibly violent that we have found bodies hundreds of meters away,” Moreno said.
Identifying the victims
Various Spaniards who had loved ones traveling on the trains posted messages on social media saying they were unaccounted for and pleading for any information.
Spain’s Civil Guard opened an office in Cordoba, the nearest city to the crash, as well as Madrid, Malaga, Huelva and Seville for family members of the missing to seek help and leave DNA samples.
“Some of the dead are not easily identifiable and will need a DNA test,” Moreno said.
Video and photos showed twisted train cars lying on their sides under floodlights late on Sunday.
“The carriages were twisted. We had to work slowly, cutting through the wreckage,” Francisco Carmona, firefighter chief of Cordoba, told Onda Cero radio. “There were moments when we had to remove the dead to get to the living.”
Passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the glass, according to Salvador Jiménez, a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, who was on board one of the derailed trains.
Jiménez did not suffer serious injuries, but saw bodies being pulled out of train cars, calling the image “harrowing.”
“A train can derail or have an accident,” Jiménez told the network by phone Monday, “but this magnitude of tragedy was unthinkable.”
Authorities said 159 people were injured. As of Monday, that included 11 adults and one child in critical condition.
‘Images that will stay in my mind’
The collision took place near Adamuz, a town in the province of Cordoba, about 370 kilometers (about 230 miles) south of Madrid.
A sports center in Adamuz was turned into a makeshift hospital, and the Spanish Red Cross set up a help center offering assistance to emergency services and people seeking information. Members of the Civil Guard and civil defense worked on site throughout the night.
“The scene was horrific. It was terrible,” Adamuz mayor Rafael Moreno told The Associated Press and other reporters. “People asking and begging for help. Those leaving the wreckage. Images that will always stay in my mind.”
Spanish King Felipe VI expressed his condolences Monday, adding that the royal house was looking into a visit to Adamuz in the coming days.
“I understand the desperation of the families and the number of injured people who have suffered this accident, and we are all really worried,” he said, speaking from Athens.
The Spanish flag was flown at half-mast in front of Parliament in Madrid for the victims on Monday.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will visit the accident site on Monday, according to his office.
Officials call accident ‘strange’
Transport Minister Puente early Monday said the cause of the crash was unknown.
He called it “a truly strange” incident because it happened on a flat stretch of track that had been renovated in May. He also said the train that jumped the track was less than 4 years old. That train belonged to the Italian-owned company Iryo, while the second train, which took the brunt of the impact, was part of Spain’s public train company, Renfe.
According to Puente, the back part of the first train derailed and crashed into the head of the other train. When asked by reporters how long an inquiry into the crash’s cause could take, he said it could be a month.
Álvaro Fernández, the president of Renfe, told Spanish public radio RNE that both trains were well under the speed limit of 250 kph; he said one was going 205 kph, the other 210 kph. He also said that “human error could be ruled out.”
The incident “must be related to the moving equipment of Iryo or the infrastructure” the Renfe president said.
Iryo issued a statement on Monday saying that its train was manufactured in 2022 and passed its latest safety check on Jan. 15. It reiterated its condolences for the victims and said it would completely cooperate with the official investigation into the causes of the tragedy.
Train services Monday between Madrid and cities in Andalusia were canceled.
Spain leads Europe in high-speed trains
Spain has spent decades investing heavily in high-speed trains and currently has the largest rail network in Europe for trains moving over 250 kph (155 mph), with more than 3,100 kilometers (1,900 miles) of track, according to the European Union.
The network is a popular, competitively priced and safe mode of transport. Renfe said more than 25 million passengers took one of its high-speed trains in 2024.
Sunday’s accident was the first with deaths on a high-speed train since Spain’s high-speed rail network opened its first line in 1992.
Spain’s worst train accident this century occurred in 2013, when 80 people died after a train derailed in the country’s northwest. An investigation concluded the train was traveling 179 kph (111 mph) on a stretch with an 80 kph (50 mph) speed limit when it left the tracks. That stretch of track was not high speed.
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Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain, and Naishadham from Madrid. AP journalist Barry Hatton contributed from Lisbon, Portugal.
